Emergencies and disaster preparedness

This briefing was discussed during a Parliamentary debate held on 11 December 2014 on the topics of strengthening health systems in developing countries and development and recovery in Sierra Leone and Liberia.

In the context of the Ebola outbreak, the briefing explores the possibility of strengthening the health system in Sierra Leone by reducing the tax incentives granted to British mining companies operating in Sierra Leone and increasing the health budget.

The briefing recognises the role the UK should play in making sure that British based corporations pay a fair amount of taxes in Sierra Leone and therefore contribute to promoting the health of the country's people.

Unrealised Potential?: The crucial role of faith leaders in the Ebola response (2015)

This interagency policy brief, realised by Christian Aid, CAFOD and Tearfund, examines the crucial role played by faith leaders in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. As trusted and respected members of their community, faith leaders have played a hugely significant role in preventing the Ebola outbreak spreading even further by disseminating key messages and mobilising their communities to do the same.

The briefing makes recommendations to policy makers in the UK, EU and UN agencies to make sure that lessons learned are applied to prevent future outbreaks occurring in the affected countries. Future programmes centred on Ebola prevention must ensure faith leaders are involved as a pivotal part of the focus.

The World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) will take place in Istanbul in April 2016. The aim of the process is to create the momentum and political will to make the humanitarian sector fit for current and future humanitarian disasters.

Christian Aid is contributing to the debate and preparation process with this paper. It outlines Christian Aid’s policy recommendations and the goals the Summit must achieve in order to shape a more effective humanitarian sector that is more oriented towards local capacities and responses.

The recent outbreak of Ebola poses an enormous threat to the people of Sierra Leone, Liberia and West Africa and to development in the poorest countries of the region, as well as being a danger to the wider world.

This briefing outlines the global health crisis posed by the Ebola outbreak in the region, its impact and the action needed to curtail the growing crisis.

Humanitarian partnerships between national and international organisations are a long-established means of responding to humanitarian need. Despite this, the sector is still structured in a way that impedes these partnerships.

With its focus on national actors, this study focuses on the vexed question of humanitarian partnership and seeks to provide evidence, in real time, of how far partnership working happened in the response to Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, and its effectiveness.

The research builds on the findings of the 2013 report: Missed opportunities: the case for strengthening national and local partnership-based humanitarian responses. It makes recommendations for action to strengthen partnerships between the national and international humanitarian systems in the Philippines and more broadly in humanitarian responses in the future.

In this briefing paper, Christian Aid outlines its position on the Gaza crisis, and why it believes that although the scale of destruction and suffering is unprecedented, the current crisis should not be a surprise to anyone as it is the result of decades of political failure and continuous Palestinian displacement.

It sets out the action now needed to address humanitarian needs and resolve the crisis.

Efforts are underway to reach affected areas, including the worst-hit provinces of Samar, Eastern Samar, Leyte, Iloilo, and Capiz, which have been without electricity and communication lines for days. Before the typhoon, most if not all of these provinces were categorised as the poorest in the country.

In this report, Christian Aid, Oxfam, Cafod, Tearfund and Action Aid detail the strengths and weaknesses of humanitarian partnerships.

They challenge the humanitarian sector to shape up and learn from the evidence that partnerships could improve the standard of aid across the sector.

But that requires the international community to pay more than lip service to the huge importance of vulnerable countries' own national and local organisations, which are the first on the scene to help people in the wake of catastrophes.

Many more people will survive and recover from emergencies such as earthquakes, floods and famines if international aid agencies boost local organisations’ ability to respond.

One of the best ways to reduce the suffering and devastation caused by disasters in poor countries is to strengthen local people’s ability to prevent them in the first place – and respond quickly if the worst does happen.

But that requires the international community to pay more than lip-service to the huge importance of vulnerable countries owe national and local organisations, which are the first on the scene to help people in the wake of catastrophes.

Almost 12 million people are facing a food and livelihoods crisis in the Sahel, as a result of drought-reduced crop yields, high cereal prices, a lack of migrant labour work, and displacement due to regional insecurity.

Immediate action and coordination by donors, INGOs and the UN is needed, to raise the US$724m needed to prevent the food crisis. Without an effective response now, millions could face severe hunger and past improvements to resilience could be wiped out.

East Africa is in the midst of its worst food crisis for 20 years caused by a lethal combination of drought, high food and fuel prices, and – in the case of Somalia – conflict. Critical aid is helping millions of vulnerable pastoralist and farming communities across Kenya and Ethiopia but a funding gap of about US$1bn remains for this work. The region continues to face serious risk of a humanitarian catastrophe.

Our report reviews the current implementation of the Saving Lives Together Framework, a UN initiative designed to strengthen and improve security collaboration between humanitarian actors in the field.

This paper, released for the one-year anniversary of the Boxing Day tsunami, examines the way to reduce the human cost of disaster – from building earthquake resistant homes and cyclone shelters to basic training in emergency preparedness.